The Soul of Man Under Socialism
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by
In "The Soul of Man" Wilde argues that, under capitalism, "the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them": instead of realising their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people "seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it" because, as Wilde puts it, "the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."
Overview
Wilde did not see kindness or altruism per se as a problem; what worried him was its misapplication in a way which leaves unaddressed the roots of the problem: "the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good" while preserving the system.[3]
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man under Socialism," 1891
Wilde's deepest concern was with man's soul; when he analysed poverty and its causes and effects in "The Soul of Man under Socialism" it was not simply the material well-being of the poor that distressed him, but how society does not allow them to reach a form of self-understanding and enlightenment. He adopted
Juliet Jacques has noted that the essay does not make any suggestions regarding political action to bring about socialism: rather it discusses the possible life of artists in a hypothetical socialist society in which private property had been abolished.[6] Wilde examined the political conditions necessary for full self-development and devotion to art, arguing, "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."[5] He observed that in contemporary Victorian capitalist society, a small minority of men such as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo "have been able to realise their personality more or less completely" because they had access to private wealth and therefore had no need to engage in wage labour.[6] He argued that the abolition of private property would lead to a society in which individuals would focus on personal growth instead of the accumulation of wealth.[3]
He made a point of differentiating "individual" socialism from "authoritarian" (government-centered) socialism, advocating a more libertarian approach, "What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first."
In a socialist society, people will have the possibility to realise their talents; "each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society." Wilde added that "upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to
Wilde showed a strong
For anarchist historian
Political philosopher Slavoj Žižek shares Wildean sentiments and intellectual contempt for charity, noting that the problem of poverty will never be solved simply by keeping poor people alive, quoting the relevant passages from Wilde's essay in his lectures[11] and book.[12]
Editions
- Oscar Wilde, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 5th ed, (London: Collins, 2003), ISBN 978-0-00-714436-5, pages 1174–1197. (The fifth edition is the current corrected version of the "Centenary Edition" [fourth edition] of the Collins Complete Works; for the first time in 1999, the Centenary Edition corrected the position of a fairly long paragraph that was out of place; the paragraph is misplaced in most modern editions before the year 2000).
- Oscar Wilde, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume IV: Criticism: Historical Criticism, Intentions, The Soul of Man, Josephine M. Guy, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ISBN 978-0-19-811961-6, pages 231-268. (The OUP's variorumedition retains the misplaced paragraph in its original position, however).
See also
References
- Kropotkin, whom he had met. Later, in De Profundis, he described Kropotkin's life as one 'of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience' and talked of him as 'a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ that seems coming out of Russia.' But in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, which appeared in 1890, it is Godwin rather than Kropotkin whose influence seems dominant." George Woodcock: Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. 1962. (pg. 447)
- ^ "In England, the Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde declared himself an anarchist and, under Kropotkin's inspiration, wrote the essay 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'" — "Anarchism as a movement, 1870–1940", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007
- ^ a b c d "The soul of man under socialism - Oscar Wilde". libcom. September 8, 2005.
- ^ Kiberd (2000:330)
- ^ a b Wilde, O. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Collins.
- ^ a b c Jacques, Juliet (3 April 2021). "Oscar Wilde Wasn't Just a Satirist. He Was a Socialist". Jacobin. Retrieved 3 April 2021.
- ^ O. Wilde (1997) De Profundis. In: O. Wilde The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, p.1092.
- ^ De Profundis, Holland/Hart-Davis, (2000:754)
- ^ Fallon, Donal (18 February 2021). "The Radical Politics of Oscar Wilde". Tribune. Retrieved 19 February 2021.
- ^ a b George Woodcock Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. 1962:447)
- YouTube(27th min)
- ^ Living in the End Times, Slavoj Zizek, (2010:117)
- "Prison Writings", Oscar Wilde, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8264-9851-9, retrieved 2020-11-08
- Williams, Kristian (Winter 2011). "The Soul of Man Under... Anarchism?". New Politics. XIII-2.
External links
- Media related to The Soul of Man under Socialism at Wikimedia Commons
- The full text of The Soul of Man Under Socialism at Wikisource
- Full text from Libcom.org in HTML
- Full text based on the Arthur L. Humphreys edition (1909) available in HTML, EPUB, Kindle and TXT] from Project Gutenberg
- Full text based on the authoritative Richard Ellman edition (1969) (with one paragraph moved as per Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, HarperCollins 1999 ed.), available in HTML, PDF and EPUB from Edwardviesel.eu
- The Soul of Man public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- An anarchist review on the context and the implications of The soul of man under socialism